


Next Time

by Mundivore



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Angst, F/M, POV Third Person Limited, Pining, Prompt Challenge, Self-Hatred, Uncertainty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 06:17:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,371
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15136946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mundivore/pseuds/Mundivore
Summary: Connie procrastinates, just not on schoolwork. She can tell him how she feels next time....Right?





	Next Time

Connie had met the strangest boy when she was out at Beach City! How often did you meet someone with magical powers, anyway? Not often. Not ever, for Connie. For most people, probably.

It was so exciting! She wanted to talk all about it, to anyone and everyone who wanted to listen, but she knew how those things went. If you made a big fuss out of something like this, nothing would go right—all those fantasy novels seemed pretty accurate on that front. She imagined telling her parents about being trapped underwater in a bubble with him, and then proceeding to never let her go to Beach City again. No, that wouldn’t do.

So she’d just told her parents that she made a new friend! Completely true. Her parents, of course, were ecstatic. She didn’t really have any friends, and there was that thing about gift horses her dad liked to say, so they wouldn’t question it.

She looked in the mirror, before going to bed. Her hair was well-kept, her pajamas freshly laundered. If Steven was the little boy learning his magic powers, and he had some magic family that went on magic missions all the time… that would make him the protagonist, wouldn’t it? So if he was the protagonist, where did she fit in?

The love interest? She giggled a little at the thought. No way. She wasn’t pretty, or strong, or special. Not even smart. Just a little bit bookish, overquiet. A side character at best. Still, maybe out of sheer vanity, she tried it out in the mirror. What would it sound like?

“I love you.” She laughed again. It looked corny, canned in the mirror. Like she was reciting a script. No, it couldn’t be right. That couldn’t ever be right. She shut off the light, and went to bed.

But as she tucked in, smiling, she just couldn’t shake a feeling. A warm hint of something special, the ghost of where he’d held her hand. Maybe next time she met him, she’d know more.

♦

Steven had a pet lion! That was  _ so _ cool! Her parents had been worried about what had happened to her—her clothes a bit worn, her cheek a bit bruised—but fortunately, it wasn’t too easy to make up a story about having gotten hurt by falling over. It was true, in fact. It merely omitted the information that she’d fallen over after running from a giant bolt of fire launched by a big rotatey monster-thing.

And they’d beat it! With Steven, and his sword, Connie helped him beat the monster with its own attacks! Like in movies, like in her dreams! Like in her books, an unassuming girl who helped the protagonist beat the odds. That helped, even if the protagonist might have been able to handle it on his own.

Being the love interest in a story wasn’t so bad. A lot of the coolest characters were also primary love interests, and a lot of the times they were also secondary protagonists. It meant she was important in his story! In  _ the _ story, some kind of magical destiny thing. She tried it again in the mirror before bed, and it felt more natural this time, more practiced.

“…I love you.”

She smiled, and winced a bit as it bothered her cheek. Her hands were all abuzz with the warm feeling from last time, not only where he’d held her hand, but where she’d held his. Guiding the sword, that felt natural. She felt useful, for once in her life. 

It never went well when the love interest held in their feelings for books and books and books—if she got it out early, then she could be a bigger part of his story, sooner. So next time, she’d just tell him.

♦

Connie stared at herself in the mirror, eyes wide, no glasses. She’d never been able to look at herself like this before—all her life, she’d needed an absurd amount of vision correction. Now, she saw better without glasses than she did with them.

It was unreal. She was still freaking out a bit over it. 

It was a wake-up call. This was  _ real. _ She wasn’t some love interest, and Steven wasn’t a protagonist, because this wasn’t a book. Real life didn’t have characters, it had people. A voice in the back of her mind said, real life didn’t have magic, either, but she pushed it aside.

“I lo—” she winced, cutting herself off. It was so… wrong! She had practiced the script, but it was still just a script. It wasn’t genuine, it didn’t mean anything. She didn’t love Steven! She was just… using him, trying to get closer to the magical destiny whatever. Putting them both into boxes, she realized in retrospect how gross it was. It had taken a shock to realize it, but it was wrong.

She needed to get a fresh start. To start thinking about Steven like a person rather than a character. How weird was it, that she had started convincing herself that she loved him, even before she even really knew who he was? Connie hadn’t even known him for two whole months yet, and she didn’t exactly see him often!

She went to bed upset at herself. Next time she saw Steven, she’d tell him about how she’d been thinking about him, and apologize for it.

♦

Connie’s heart leapt into her mouth as Steven stumbled off of the cliff near the lighthouse, tumbling down and down and down, towards the sandy beach below.

“Steven!” She called out to him. She ran forward, reaching out her arms. Catching him at this height wouldn’t do anything, just hurt her too, but she needed to be there! Maybe she’d help him. Make it so he was hurt, nearly-dead, rather than totally dead. She looked all around her at the featureless sandy beach, looking for anyone, anything that might help her. 

Nothing.

She was too far away. Each step seemed only to put her further and further away, and she watched uselessly as the distance between Steven and the ground got smaller and smaller. Smaller. Smaller. Zero. She gave a yell—

And rocketed upright in her bed, heart thudding. A cold sweat dampened her pajamas.

A nightmare. She listened for several careful seconds to be sure that she hadn’t woken anyone, then quietly got up and turned on her light. She meandered over to the mirror, and examined the little circles under her eyes—sleeping on Lion for part of last night hadn’t been the most restful. A moving animal wasn’t a comfortable place to sleep. Last night. It wasn’t too hard for her to see where her nightmare had come from. A little dose of Steven’s story about Amethyst falling off the cliff, but mostly the memory of watching Steven falling off Lapis’ tower of water. 

Connie remembered how her heart had shot into her mouth as she looked around for anyway, anything that could slow him down. She remembered the flare of hope as Lion met her eyes, and the few terrifying, delicate moments where he strained to reach her hand.The triumph, as they made it safe to the ground, and followed by the scuttle to gather around the van as the roaring thunder of millions of tons of water rumbled overhead.

What if Lion hadn’t been there? Steven could have died.

What if… what if Connie hadn’t been there? Did Steven’s family, did they know Lion well enough to know that he could teleport? Surely, they must. And if they hadn’t, couldn’t Lion have saved Steven on his own? Surely, he could have.

Steven would have been fine without her. That’s what logic said, what her good sense said. She refused to believe that she was the only thing standing between him and and a gruesome death that night. But then why did she care so much, that she’d been there for him? Not just that  _ someone _ had been there, but that she had, specifically.

Was it because… 

No. She shook her head. She wouldn’t even think the words, let alone say them. It was perfectly natural for her to be concerned for her friend, to be proud to have helped. She shut off her light and went back to bed. 

♦

Connie kicked at a clump of sand. Her dad was later than usual on picking her up, but that happened sometimes. Waiting on the beach normally wasn’t so bad but this time, she was tired, and wanted to go to bed. Steven was, too, which was why he hadn’t come to wait with her. It had been an incredible day, but absolutely exhausting.

Even after she’d returned to being Connie, having been Stevonnie made her feel like a completely new person than she was before. It wasn’t like anything she could ever describe, but she felt obligated to anyway. She mulled over the words, and nothing seemed to fit.

Being Stevonnie made her part of something bigger.

Not just literally, but the literal part couldn’t be set aside. Connie roamed around until she found a leftover footprint that Stevonnie had left behind on their beach-run. When she fit her heel to theirs, her toes went just over halfway across. The memory of it was exhilarating. Walking, running, movement, they felt effortless as Stevonnie. Being Stevonnie felt almost like being one part of a nascent force of nature, a living tremor in the Earth that only hinted at a greater tectonic power.

But there was an emotional equivalent to that feeling, and that had lasted beyond the length of the fusion itself. A sense of connection, of wholeness. Steven had been right there, in her mind. Or she had been right there, in his. Or both?

It was… an on-the-same-pagedness that went beyond completing each other’s sentences, but to completing each other’s thoughts. When they’d left the dance, they didn’t need to say anything to know that it was time for them to leave—they’d just known. It had been long enough that Connie had rebuilt her confidence, but not so long for her to get stressed again by the attention and the noise. It had been long enough that Steven hadn’t felt awkward for walking off, but not so long he felt trapped into staying.

It wasn’t the first time she’d felt something kind of like that, but it was  _ more _ than usual. She wondered if she’d get to do that again, to be that person again. Stevonnie was the person Connie wished she was all the time, aloof and brilliant and interesting. Connie wondered if it was even appropriate to  _ ask _ to become that again. It felt too intimate to do on purpose, to do on request. Like something that should happen specially, unintentionally. But she wanted to, and she wanted to be more… Stevonnie, than she was.

She turned as she heard the crackle of her dad’s tires along the nearby road. Her dad gave a cheery but startling double-beep of the horn to announce his presence. 

Maybe she’d ask him next time, Connie figured as she ran for the car. Experimentally, needlessly, thoughtlessly, like Stevonnie might. Maybe it was as simple as asking, or maybe it wasn’t, but she’d never know if she never asked.

♦

Connie took a deep breath before undoing the wrap around her hand, the blisters beneath stinging as they were exposed to the fresh air. She glanced back as she heard a mutter of Steven’s conversation with one of the gems. Amethyst, maybe. It was muffled through the closed bathroom door, but still sounded friendly, and warm.

Steven’s house had a different ambiance than hers. Her house had reserved silence, polite silence, comfortable silence, and moody silence as the major set of background noise sets. Steven’s house, though, fluctuated between extremes. Total silence, the silence of near-emptiness in the background, or a near-constant jabber when one or more of the gems was home. Connie’s family liked to enjoy silence with each other—quiet conversation was about as loud as it usually got. Steven’s family enjoyed the presence of each other boisterously, and when they didn’t, they secluded themselves entirely from each other, in that massive temple or across their network of warp pads.

It was nice.

Connie examined her blisters in the mirror, and suddenly noticed a stranger in the reflection. She found herself shocked by the fire in her eyes, the confidence and comfort in her expression. The stranger was still Connie, but such a different bearing that she could scarcely recognize herself. Was sword training really doing that much good for her?

As doubt and confusion entered her eyes, the stranger vanished, replaced by the familiar Connie, the ordinary Connie. Meek, unsure, uncomfortable. She tried her best to replicate that grin, that posture she’d held when she wasn’t thinking, but it didn’t come back in the same way. She saw shadows of the adventurous Connie, the happy Connie… but only shadows. 

She chuckled. Maybe, for the best. Just two hours ago, she had been in a mindset where she’d tricked herself into being utterly willing to die for Steven! If that was the happy Connie, then the sad Connie was probably a lot safer. She took the spare bandages she’d brought in with her to the bathroom, and began slowly re-wrapping her hand.

What had gotten her there? The wonder wasn’t without an easy answer—it was Pearl, of course. Pearl had taught her the mindset, romanticized it. So was Connie just so foolish, so easily bamboozled, that she’d accept that without pretense? Or was it that Pearl was motivating enough of a speaker to make martyrdom sound passionate, beautiful, to make it sound like not just  _ a _ purpose but  _ the _ purpose?

Connie shook her head. She wasn’t convinced she was thinking about it from the right angle—after all, Pearl wasn’t so much trying to enforce a new mindset upon her, but had rather been trying to share an existing one. Pearl had been trying to share her own perspective. So if Connie could figure out what made Pearl think like that in the first place, then she might find her answer there. The real, progenitor reason.

She taped up the bandage with a sigh, examining the final product. Nicely done. Her cover-story to her parents had been they were blisters she got practicing with her off-hand in tennis. A lie with a seed of truth—the truth was, she was fairly ambidextrous. She favored one side in tennis because of how she’d been taught, though, so now the other side was getting blistered in sword training. Pearl was keen to teach both sides—‘any advantage you can get,’ or something along those lines.

Pearl laughed loudly in the other room. To be willing to die for someone, and to be happy about that. What was it about Rose Quartz that had made Pearl into that person? Something that, just maybe, could be the same between Connie and Steven. Connie didn’t know much about the relationship between Pearl and Rose. That Rose was the leader of the rebellion, Connie knew, but Steven wasn’t the leader of… much of anything, really. Not yet, at least. The only thing that she could really think of was… 

Steven had told her once, that Pearl loved Rose Quartz more than anyone who’d ever lived. Was it Pearl’s love for Rose, then that had driven her to such self-destructive service? That wouldn’t make any sense, though. Because then, that would mean… 

Connie leaned forward in the mirror, uncertain, uncomfortable, but in different ways than she was used to. She mouthed the words first, and it felt odd. A churning in her stomach, a buzz in her teeth. It was curious, and terrible, and unwelcome, and she wanted to say it again. A whisper this time, just to test.

“I love Steven Universe?”

For the briefest of instants, the new Connie was back—even unsure, uncomfortable, unconfident, she was clearly a different person. A more developed person, a more certain person. A person with courage.

Her head jerked to the side as she was startled by a loud knock.

“Connie, you have to go soon!” Pearl’s voice rang sing-songy through the door.

“R-right, got it!” She glanced back at the mirror, smiled, and left.

♦

Connie fell into bed, sore and tired. Both training today, and fusion-monsters? What a night. Rose’s sword was propped up against the side of her bed. Her glasses were folded up on her nightstand, and it was a kind of weight off of her shoulders to know that she’d never need to wear them again. Keeping secrets, delaying the truth, staying quiet… they’d become part of her identity. She’d grown all too comfortable with living two lives. A new Connie, and an old Connie. The Connie who Steven had first befriended, and the Connie that he’d helped her become.

‘My Connie,’ he’d called her. Just hours ago.

She wasn’t even sure what to think about that. It certainly wasn’t making things any less complicated. So many different ways to read that. I mean, that he liked her was obvious. She had assumed that, she knew it. But now she wasn’t sure if he liked her in any sort of way more than friendship. Connie wasn’t even sure of what she thought of Steven on that front, and now she was left to question the situation in both directions? Not fair!

What if he did love her? What did he even see in her, as a person? What would that even be like? 

Or worse, what if he loved her, and she didn’t actually love him back? Not real love, but merely the return of that silly, childish crush she’d had before. Or what if Steven just had a crush on her, and it turned out that she wasn’t the best for him? Someone who he was enamored with, but wouldn’t ever really be able to love.

What if she truly, really did love Steven, and he didn’t love her back?

The thought sat thickly in her stomach. She wouldn’t be able to sleep, worrying over things like this. There wasn’t a magic solution to know what Steven really, truly thought, though. No way to know, other than… well, other than to ask.

Connie groaned on rolled over onto her side. Maybe. Maybe next time she saw him? Or maybe the time after that? Or, well, just maybe. Maybe some time.

♦

‘Some time’ looked further and further away every time she saw him. Between Jasper and Homeworld, Steven had other things to deal with. Connie found it easier and easier to decide that he didn’t need to think about anything so petty as love at a time like this. The best opportunity she had, the time she got the closest, the time they’d danced… he’d turned into a baby. After that, that definitely wasn’t the time. Connie didn’t want to accidentally humiliate him any further.

But then there were no good times. A giant gem-monster beneath the Earth’s crust, the defeat of Malachite leaving Jasper lurking in the bathroom, the Rubies bringing with them the looming idea of Homeworld… too much. No time to talk about love, simply no time that wouldn’t potentially be a stress.

♦

Connie had been worried about Steven before. She knew he had baggage he carried, things he feared. She’d even heard of the whole altercation with Bismuth, before.

But seeing it, first hand, how that weighed on him? That was something else. To look up and see the figures that weighed on him, that weighed on everything between them, towering over even  _ Stevonnie? _ It put things in perspective for her.

Connie glanced up to the clock. Still two hours until school was out. She was technically supposed to be taking notes, she figured. The teacher was talking about quadratic equations, but she’d read ahead in the book with Steven a couple weeks ago. She wasn’t worried about the test. She was pretty much never worried about tests—her notebooks had actually begun to fill with doodles over the course of the last year or so.

She paged back towards the beginning of the her doodles. Many were just geometric—little stars, circles, and triangles—but they grew more complicated, more bold as she went on. Then, a page that had seen a lot of going back to. At the top of the paper, there was a little black heart scribbled in with ball-point pen, a name, and then another heart. Heart-Steven-heart. It was written small, so nobody leaning over would be able to read it, but the rest of the page had been left blank as if to remind her of its importance. Later, Connie had come back and viciously crossed out the doodle with a big X, but she looked at it now with uncertainty.

Yes, her feelings about Steven were different, now. But no longer was she ashamed of the thoughtless sort of puppy-love she’d once had for Steven. Yes, it wasn’t right, but it was nothing to be ashamed of, really. Mistakes happen, and kids her age were kind of expected to have crushes. She wasn’t wrong for giving into the expectation, for giving into what all of society had made her want to feel.

She regretted that big X crossed through the doodle. It couldn’t be undone, but perhaps…  Carefully, she marked out a copy of the original, right below the first. She smiled. There. Better. It was important to preserve memories, feelings, the way that they were. The crossed-out name was just as important as the original name, so both could exist now.

Her feelings for Steven now, they were complicated, but she couldn’t escape the fundamental truth that one of those feelings was love. Whether that love was romantic or platonic, Connie wasn’t fully sure yet. She wasn’t so sure she cared which, in all honesty. Romance was complicated, and she didn’t fully understand it, but Steven wasn’t in a place where romance would do him any good. He was in a place where love, though—no matter the kind—could do him worlds of help.

She sighed as she paged through her notebook, seeing the time skip by as her doodles progressed slowly towards the present. Lots of swords started cropping up—no wonders, there. Swords, and shields.

What kind of feelings did she have for Steven, that weren’t love?

She turned to a blank page, and began jotting down a list.

_ Respect _ . Steven was smart, and strong, and kind in a way she wished she could be. She began to write down  _ possessive, _ but then reassesed herself and replaced it with  _ protective. _ Connie wanted to protect him from danger, and wanted to keep him safe and happy.  _ Comrade. _ Steven never treated her as anything more or less than an equal. It made her feel powerful and important, like he was.  _ Important. _ Steven wasn’t just important to the world, though. He was important to her.  _ Responsibility. _ Connie felt like she had a duty to Steven, not legally or not as a knight to a liege but personally. A personal, self-imposed duty.

She creased her brow as  _ concern _ made it onto her list. It wasn’t just that Steven had to deal with a lot of problems, recently, but that he’d taken them all to be his fault. But really, none of them were. They were all some combination of his mom’s fault, and Homeworld’s. But he’d been trying for so long to be just like his mother, and the fact that biologically speaking you could stretch definitions to kind-of-sort-of call him his own mother… neither of those helped at all. 

Connie thought of other things, but she kept circling back around to that one. Concern, concern. Steven needed a balm to his anxieties and she didn’t know if she was the person who could, or should do that. It had to be better than not trying at all, though. She needed to take action. 

She needed to say something.

Steven needed to know that he was more than his mom, that he meant something more to her. He needed to know the things she felt about him, the ways that Steven was important to the world that had nothing to do with his parentage. He needed to feel unique, he needed to see at least a little in himself of what Connie saw in him. How could she communicate those things?

She couldn’t quite just read off the list to him, could she? It would be long, and it would be flattering, embarrassing to him. Steven didn’t want hero-worship. It would be good to make him feel special, and unique, but worship… anything that came close to that would make him feel  _ more _ like Rose Quartz, not less. But how could she communicate these things, an entire page of thing she felt for him, without saying them at all? What words could say all those things, without saying them at all?

_ Love. _ The word sprawled out across the bottom of the page, curled in the most careful cursive Connie could muster. These other feelings she had, they had not been separate from her love of Steven at all. They were facets of it, specifications to her feelings to him. She could say all these things and more, with three words.

So she decided, she would. The next time she saw him, three words, and then she’d be in too deep to pull back. She could tell him everything, improvise from there, but those three words had to happen. All she needed is… just a few minutes alone with Steven. That happened often enough. She’d find the time.

♦

Connie smacked her head forehead with a groan.

“What is it?” Her mom glanced up to the rear-view mirror to look at her.

“Oh, nothing.” Connie sighed. “I was just so worried about not being able to get a hold of you, that I kinda forgot something important I meant to do.”

“Do we need to go back for it?”

The last few days had been… a ride. Steven got in a fight with the gems too quickly for anything pleasant to happen at all, let alone to have a heart-to-heart. For that to escalate into a space-adventure, to save his dad from a human zoo? There was definitely a better day to deal with this, not right after that.

“No, it’s fine.”

“I’m sure you’ll be back again enough.” Her mom smiled. “It can probably wait until next time, right?”

Connie chuckled a little. That tic had to come from somewhere, she supposed.

“What was it?” Her mom’s question was stunted, awkward. She was bad at small talk.

“Oh… just something I wanted to talk about with Steven.”

“Ah, well that’s even easier then! You can text him, or call, or something.”

“No way,” Connie said. “It’s the sort of thing you talk about in person.”

“Hmm. No proposing.”

“What!? Why would you—” Connie glared at her mother in the mirror. Her eyes wrinkled in a hidden smile, but she was was clearly trying not to give the game away.

“You’re mean,” Connie muttered with a grumble.

“Oh, just rotten,” her mother agreed with a chuckle. “Seriously though, no proposing. You’re a kid.”

♦

Connie glanced at her reflection in the car window as she set the hat of ‘Veronica Cucamonga’ to the side. She’d wanted to talk to him. He needed to know! But… not with her dad watching. It would have been awkward.

♦

Connie shuddered as she glanced in her mirror. Her hair was a mess, still damp and flecked with sea-salt. Her skin had dried, but when she brought her hands to her arms, grabbing herself—for warmth, she reassured herself—they were still cold to the touch. Her eyes were bloodshot, her posture limp.

She’d more seen than heard Steven say those three words that she’d spent over half the time she’d known him trying to say to his face. The waves drowned out most of the sound, the distance was extreme, but she knew what he’d said right before he walked into that accursed chocolate-drop of a spaceship.

‘I love you.’ 

They were just as ambiguous, just as uncertain, just as meaningless in lack of context as it’d been if she said it. Platonic? Romantic? Familial? Was it just at her, or just at the other gems, or at both of them? But where she’d struggled over saying  _ anything _ , he’d at least said something. He’d said something, and then was locked away in a spaceship and taken away. Abducted. Gone.

Pearl was talking about repairing one of the old dropships the gems had originally come to Earth on, but even if it could fly it’d be slower than the ship Steven was on. If they could mount a rescue, it’d be late if it arrived at all. If they made it to Homeworld, they’d be weeks late. Maybe months.

Her face twisted into a bitter rictus. Why had he done it?

Because he hated himself. Because on some level or another, he didn’t see the value in his very existence. Because he didn’t see in himself what she saw in him, what literally  _ anyone else _ saw in him.

And something in Connie said that it was her fault.

How many times had she said, ‘next time?’ How long had she put off telling him, talking with him about how she felt or asking about him? Every time. The list of ‘next times’ had never shrunk. It had merely grown, and grown, and grown. If she’d told him all the things she felt about him… all the feelings she had for him… if she’d said all those things, would Steven had tried to sacrifice himself in the same way?

No, no. It was worse than that. If Connie had just told him, once! If she had told him any single one of those times, he might not have gone. He would have known that he was needed here. By her, if nobody else. He would have known that he needed to do more, to try harder, to at least not go out without a fight! And maybe, maybe he could have found a way to love himself.

Maybe if he knew that someone else loved him, someone who hadn’t known him his whole life, maybe that would have gotten it through his skull.

But he didn’t know those things. Because  _ she _ hadn’t told him.

For an instant, Connie saw in the mirror a stranger. The old Connie, who she couldn’t ever just be rid of. Her eyes were bloodshot with pathetic tears, her stance was bowed from cowardice. She was the one who had doomed Steven, for lacking what mere spine it took to say a few words. Three words were all that she needed to have said to save Steven from imprisonment, or death, or worse, and if nothing was done she’d get to live out the rest of her life, free of any punishment. And more than ever before, Connie hated that shell of a person who she’d been. Who she still was, when she wasn’t looking.

Connie grit her teeth in anger, and lashed out at her mirror. Her fist flew for her doppelganger’s neck, shattering the glass and cracking the wooden frame. The mirror fell to a ground with a dull  _ thunk _ , and a fiery pain shot up her arm. In a haze, she examined her bloodied fist. Only shallow cuts, as far as she could tell. The bruised knuckles would be worse. Connie found herself almost disappointed in her good fortune. She deserved more pain than just that.

The desperate pounding of her parents up the stairs in the background dully registered as reason returned to her. There was still had so much she wanted to say to him! So much more left aside for later… 

Connie gave a strangled cry, curling down to hug her knees. She had already begun sobbing as her door opened, and her hand stung brutally, but those things were far from her mind.

Because now, she didn’t know if there would even  _ be _ a next time.


End file.
